Map Comparisons

35 side-by-side comparisons of historical border maps, from the rise of Rome to the end of the Cold War, with the states that appeared, vanished, grew or shrank.

Europe

• Rise of Rome · 200 BC vs AD 100
• Fall of the Western Roman Empire · AD 400 vs AD 500
• The Carolingian Empire · AD 700 vs AD 800
• Europe around the year 1000 · AD 900 vs 1000
• The High Middle Ages · 1100 vs 1300
• Fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman advance · 1400 vs 1500
• The Thirty Years’ War and its aftermath · 1600 vs 1700
• Napoleonic Europe · 1783 vs 1815
• Unification of Italy and Germany · 1815 vs 1880
• Europe before the First World War · 1880 vs 1914
• World War I · 1914 vs 1920
• Between the wars · 1920 vs 1938
• World War II · 1938 vs 1945
• End of the Cold War · 1960 vs 1994
• Europe after the Cold War · 1994 vs 2010

Asia

• Maurya and Han · 300 BC vs 100 BC
• The rise of the Tang · AD 600 vs AD 700
• Mongol conquests · 1200 vs 1300
• From the Yuan to the Ming · 1300 vs 1400
• The Qing conquest · 1600 vs 1700
• Asia in the age of imperialism · 1800 vs 1900
• War and independence in Asia · 1938 vs 1960

Africa

• The Arab conquest of North Africa · AD 600 vs AD 800
• Scramble for Africa · 1880 vs 1914
• African independence · 1914 vs 1960

Americas

• The Spanish conquest · 1492 vs 1600
• Independence in the Americas · 1783 vs 1880
• The Americas from 1880 to 1920 · 1880 vs 1920

Oceania

• The colonisation of Oceania · 1783 vs 1900

world

• Alexander the Great · 500 BC vs 300 BC
• Rise of the caliphate · AD 600 vs AD 700
• Age of Discovery · 1492 vs 1600
• The age of empires · 1800 vs 1914
• The world wars · 1914 vs 1945
• Decolonisation · 1945 vs 1994

Compare any two years with the swipe tool

Last updated 10 November 2026. Sources: border data from historical-basemaps, land and rivers from Natural Earth; texts written for Chronica Maps from standard reference works. How we make the maps.